Facebook Asks Users to Judge Trustworthiness of News Sources

Facebook, which is cutting the amount of news in its news feed, will prioritize information from the publishers that remain on the social network by measuring how trustworthy they are, according to Bloomberg.

Trustworthiness is based on a recent survey of U.S. Facebook users that gauged their familiarity with, and trust in, different sources of news. The results will inform the company’s ranking in the news feed, a stream of updates people see when they log in.

News sources should also be "informative" and relevant to people’s local communities, the company said in a statement. The move helps Facebook avoid perceptions of bias in selecting what news providers to highlight.

"The hard question we’ve struggled with is how to decide what news sources are broadly trusted in a world with so much division," CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. "We could try to make that decision ourselves, but that’s not something we’re comfortable with.

Publishers expressed concern about the news feed changes announced last week because many news sites have come to depend on traffic from Facebook. Zuckerberg said he expects news to make up roughly 4 percent of the news feed, down from roughly 5 percent today. "This is a big change, but news will always be a critical way for people to start conversations on important topics," he added.